Frontal cortex emesis between novels.

Tag Archives: sacrifice

This is a terrible trait to have, especially in Los Angeles, but I find people who take themselves seriously & think of themselves as very important as inconceivably funny.

Especially if they are earnest about it. I would never survive Washington, D.C.

If I’m in a CVS & I saw you get out of a Bentley & you are wearing Jimmy Choos & you have those nails that make it impossible to lead a pragmatic life style & you are arguing with someone who makes $11 an hour about a coupon, you are hilarious.

If you cut in front of a large Latino family trying to get a table for 10 to celebrate their kids’ graduation at a family restaurant in Woodland Hills because you were a guest star on 6 episodes of “Rockford Files,” I cannot stop laughing at you.

If you want to move your cancer surgeries around because you want to play golf on a particular day but you can’t be bothered to dictate properly so you can get your claims paid, you might as well cart me to the morgue, because I’m dead.

And then there’s the fame people. I wait until the last possible second to tell anybody anything about me, because listening to people talk at you reveals who they are. Personal information is a weapon. If you think you are a huge big deal because you once did publicity for three Nickelodeon stars, & that somehow I should be impressed by that, I see no reason to pop your delightful bubble of delusion. You are amusing forever.

My friend is keeping a secret Lenten blog, & in it she discusses Jesus’ admonition to keep your piety to your damn self. This kind of flies in the face of me keeping a pretty open blog about what’s going on with my Give Ups/Give Ins, but I’m not here to tell you I’m an awesome super Christian. I’m here to tell you I totally suck at everything without The Lord.

I’ve spoken before about how God’s various commandments are not there to make us feel like crap about ourselves, but they’re there to help us avoid dumb shit He knows is bad for us because hello, He’s God. Let me share with you a modern parable that I give to my clients from time to time to illustrate why it’s better to listen to your Elders (Cthulu worshippers may identify):

If you’ve ever spent twenty minutes with a toddler, a cat, or a dog, you notice a couple of things. They spend a lot of time close to the ground, & they make a beeline for anything on that ground. Say you have vacuumed the absolute living crap out of your front room, but now there’s a toddler/cat/dog hanging out. They can see the cracker you dropped under your couch three months ago. It is now their utmost desire & goal to obtain that cracker.

They spend the better part of ten minutes staring at, stalking, & evaluating that cracker. They then spend another ten trying to get to that cracker. You, as guardian, may make remarks like “What’re you doing?” in a big goofy high pitched voice, but you’re not a jerk & you want to see what the tiny creature is up to. Eventually, they emerge from under the couch with the cracker in hand or mouth, beaming with pride, and they are about to bite…

What do you do? “Oh God NO!” you yell, whipping the dustmite-coated prize from the tiny creature. You know it’s totally gross & will make them sick. You are horrified that such a thing exists in your world. You feel like the world’s worst housekeeper. And now the child is screaming & crying. The dog is whining. And cat has already scratched you & run off with it & is chomping it down & will throw it up in your shoe later.

And now you know how God feels when He sees us striving for the low & disgusting things in our ground-level eye line. He’s like “Seriously? I have a fresh batch of cookies in the oven for you! Why in the hell are you using all your energy to get a dusty cracker? CAN’T YOU SMELL THE COOKIES?”

And Jesus is all “Forgive them, Father, for they can only see dusty crackers.”

And God’s like “Fine, whatever. Where’s the DustBuster?”

My dusty cracker has been The Wrong Man, sugar, stable but spirit-crushing work. “Look what I can do!” I say to The Lord. He sighs. “But I’ve imagined so much more for you. Oh well, come to Me when you’re fed up with dusty crackers. And would it kill you to stop puking in my shoes?”

What has this to do with Lent? Well, it’s forcing me to see beyond the dusty crackers. I was hungry after my tasty but meager dinner. The Voice whispered “Maybe now would be a good time to work out.” I said “Maybe I should check on my elven army” cos I was just made regent of my alliance & I’m responsible for the happiness of 67 Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle Earth players. “Yeah, ok, that will help,” says the Voice, rolling His eyes.

But after I checked on my elves (they’ve mined a ton of ore!), I got on the recumbent bike. I did some arms. And God was right. I was no longer hungry, & I’d worked out for 20 minutes.

The dusty cracker of sloth is hella tempting. God dangled fitness cookies in front of me & I was like “Yeah, I’ll have one of those, though it feels like suffering” & Jesus was all “You think you know from suffering?” & I was like “Well, yeah” & then I felt like a stupid baby, but an empowered stupid baby.

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Cos seriously if left to my own devices I’d weigh 900lbs, have one of those fetishist feeder boyfriends who controls me, & y’all would be carting me around in the back of a firetruck.

Jesus has my back, yo, even though I am a total idiot. He’s got yours, too. I won’t comment as to your level of idiocy.